Saturday, September 07, 2013

The
plan was hatched, revisited, pondered, and refined many times ever since Dr.
Juvenal Urbino asked permission to see her father: Fermina Daza will foil her
husband’s attempts to consummate their marriage until the day she only knew ---
to be announced by a monthly cycle of a hot flushing feeling peculiar only to women,
surrendering at the perfect moment when the blood inside her will start to
curdle, which she successful did during their long honeymoon voyage to La
Rochelle, her triumph etched in Dr. Juvenal Urbino’s concealed joy on seeing
the red blot in the bed sheets as the ultimate proof that he alone took his
wife’s chastity.

But
it was Florentino Ariza during one of those futile violin serenades under the balcony
of her father’s house in La Manga, a desperate effort to win back the woman he
loved and loved him before that fateful trip to Riohacha, when Fermina Daza, in
an act of pity more than love, came down, took his hand to her virgin breasts, found
themselves in a cold condemned hotel in a place named after a saint where her
mouth taught Florentiza Ariza of a more intense pleasure than the final act of
copulation, imprisoning him forever to that memory which haunted him to every willing
womb he preyed on in an impossible quest to relieve that most blissful moment
of his life, even pretending that it was Rosalba who first fulfilled his
manhood, searching for that sensual mouth in the sluggishness of Widow Nazaret,
in the longevity of Ausencia Santander, the rancour of Sara Noriega, the fatal
infidelity of Olimpia Zulueta, in the amorous contradictions of the widows
Prudencia and Prudencia and Josefa, in Angeles Alfaro who was nearest to being
loved, in the madness and voracity of Andrea Varon, in the pubescence of America
Vicuna, and many other others whose faces he had forgotten but whose names are written
on a list he keep as an act of vengeance on Fermina Daza.

They
have become one, fated to be apart but destined for each other, for their love
at the time of cholera has infected their lives until the day when they will
cruise the Magdalena River forever, a destiny preluded by Fermina Daza’s return
to La Manga twenty years later to attend to the death of her husband’s mother where
she discovered the resilience of that single night, for she shuddered with just
knowing that Florentino Ariza still lives, while Florentino Ariza was thrown
back into the lost love-struck lover he was many years ago when he learned of
Fermrina Daza’s impending marriage to Dr. Juvenal Urbino, the triumph of his countless
conquests vaporized by his helplessness, for the fragrance of Fermina Daza never
left him since that night in the old hotel.

Under
the dire circumstance of a wake for a dead woman, their eyes met and they knew
that they must be together again, their rekindled passion leading them to a
newly built hostel with no name where they flung into each other like
mortal enemies in combat, kissed like they want to swallow each other alive, Fermina
Daza’s mouth doing its magic and Florentino Ariza trembling with insane sensuality
like the night when he lost his virginity, the longing and hurting of the last
20 years enmeshed in a deluge of sweat and tears and moans, as Dr. Juvenal
Urbino attended to visitors to his mother’s wake nearby...